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By Clifford A. Pearson

Poised between the undifferentiated sprawl of suburbia and a nascent urbanism where people live and party downtown, Scottsdale is wrestling with its future. While much of the fast-growing, post–World War II Southwest sprouted from arid soil like magic, Scottsdale has deeper architectural roots—including Frank Lloyd Wright’s Taliesin West, Paul Schweiker’s regionalist Upton House, and Paolo Soleri’s Cosanti studios. Now, Will Bruder is working with an innovative developer on a series of multifamily housing projects that aim to build on the town’s modern and frontier pasts, while pushing the design envelope forward.

The first of three housing complexes for Context Development, a Canadian company that recently entered the Phoenix market, Loloma 5 serves as a small-scale test for Bruder’s ideas on juicing up suburbia with rich doses of urbanity. The second project, called the Vale, will be completed in August and offer 46 apartments (including nine live-work units), 7,000 square feet of retail, and a highly articulated street facade that engages the public realm. About the time that the Vale opens, Bruder and Context Development will start construction on a third project, the Upton, with 10 units for sale.

Given a narrow site (120 by 75 feet) in Old Town Scottsdale, Bruder needed to squeeze in five spacious town houses that would attract buyers who could easily purchase single-family houses elsewhere. He also needed to keep construction costs down to about $125 per square foot and follow green principles to reduce energy consumption.

The Old Town area retains a smattering of Spanish-style buildings set on wide, suburban streets. A live theater, an art school, a bus station designed by Vito Acconci, and the hip James Hotel by Deborah Berke [Record, August 2004, page 144] provide the nucleus of an emerging downtown scene. Bruder and Nicole Roberts of Context Development wanted Loloma 5 to tap into this mixed bag of old and new.